The Ensouled Ones
by NiKiTa5
Summary: 5yr after S6 Buffy must face new apocalypse. Spike suddednly reappears and Buffy's secret is let out. WIP
1. Prologue

AN: My first attempt at a non AU fic. This part is really, really short and I promise the next chapters are longer. The story is set 4 years after season 6. Tara didn't die. Spike never returned to Sunnydale. Read and the story will explain, I think. Let me know what you think.  
  
  
  
  
  
Prologue  
  
  
  
Sunnydale 2005  
  
Buffy wandered through the familiar cemetery, not even looking up. She knew the grounds by heart and didn't really need to see where she was going. It was a quiet night, slayage wise. All she had encountered was two fledglings. Buffy knew why. After all, the last nine years or so, on the hellmouth, had taught her one thing. Whenever an apocalypse was approaching, the demon world had a tendency to either run off in fear or hide to plot their evil part in it.  
  
This apocalypse was no different. Four weeks ago she had first heard of ' the Daywalkers '  
  
She had run into a fledgling who had pleaded with her; " Don't kill me. I'll tell you about the Daywalkers if you don't" Buffy had held her stake and shrugged before responding; "Kinda hard to kill something that's already dead", before letting her stake plunge through the vampires chest. Before the dust had even settled she heard hands clapping. She whirled around to see where it came from.  
  
Out of the shadows by a mausoleum stepped a bronze-skinned, tall man with long, black hair.  
  
"So this is the infamous slayer", the dark-haired man had said in American, slightly tinted with a weird accent. His black eyes studied her.  
  
"Doesn't that entrance and line ever get old? I've got to tell you, if you want to impress a girl you really need to come up with new material", Buffy said, referring to her first encounter with Spike, Dracula and several others later. She sensed the 'thing' in front of her was a vampire, but something was off. This wasn't like anything else she had encountered.  
  
Before any other words were exchanged, Buffy launched an attack. She did a couple of roundhouse kicks and sent 'the vampire' flying. He didn't resist. He just smiled at her. When she came close and tried a left hook, he caught her wrist. As she tried to throw a punch with her right arm he caught her right wrist as well.  
  
"Tsk, tsk. Whatever happened to the introductions? Allow me. I'm Teb Ankh and this" he tilted his head to his right, where a raven-haired beauty had stepped out from the shadows, "is my sister Sha-het-nem." He released his grip and both of them smiled at Buffy.  
  
Buffy didn't waste any time conjuring up a stake and plunged it through Teb Ankh's chest. He just laughed and pulled it out.  
  
"You actually believe you can destroy me, with the same means you use on the pitiful nightwalkers?", he asked. He slapped Buffy with his backhand and it was Buffy's turn to go flying across the cemetery from his forceful blow. Buffy crouched up, a little dizzy and wiped the blood trickling from the corner of her mouth.  
  
"Fear not, Slayer. I shan't kill you. I want you to be here, when we bring an end to this world, and claim our throne to make this world our own. You'll make a nice little slave." With that he had left 


	2. Chapter 1

A/N: Ehh slight change of timeline here. Story has a present time late autumn 2006. Which means last chapter took place in 2006. This sets the main story line 4 and a half years after season 6. And as for Angel. I don't think it follows the timeline of the show at all.  
  
On another note, I don't have a Beta for this story (Anyone interested?) and I haven't updated it in a long, long time. I've been working on my websites so go check them out. They're all at www.flesh-for-fantasy.com There's my blog, an awards site and Snarkysoul's and my fanfiction  
Chapter 1  
  
~LA Autumn 2002~  
  
Gunn stepped into the lobby at the Hyperion dragging a heavy wool blanket with him. From inside the blanket, squeaks could be heard.  
  
"Angel!", Gunn called out a bit out of breath after struggling with the blankets contents. Angel came into view at the top of the stairs closely followed by Connor.  
  
"This you're going to want to see", Gunn huffed, before rolling out the blanket.  
  
"Bad, Bad man! Put mummy in a blanket! Mummy eats bad men. Come to mummy." The entire room a part from the raven head herself watched wide-eyed as Drusilla went from hysteric to eerie calm.  
  
"Drusilla!? What are you doing here?", Angel interrupted her from her current mission to thrall Gunn. Angel was taken by surprise by her presence, but wanted to get to the bottom as to what had brought her to LA again. Last time he'd heard of her, she had gone back to Brazil.  
  
"Daddy! Oh wait you're not daddy. You have that awful spark in you, just like my Spike. The wolfs promised me they would take the spark away." Drusilla pouted as she realized Angel still had his soul and Wolfram Hart had not succeeded in taking it away.  
  
"Dru. What. Are you doing here? And what about Spike?", Angel tried again, his voice tinted with impatience. Dru stepped up closer to him and leaned in to his ear. Angel tried not to flinch from the closeness and instead focused on staying alert and keeping his guard up.  
  
"Miss Edith whispered to me... Shh don't tell anyone else. He fought them. And he won. He got a special prezzie for winning. My Spike beat them.", Drusilla once again lost her train of words and she clapped her hands giddily together, before starting to dance around the room humming to a song in her head. She must have lost it again, Angel thought before once again trying to get her attention.  
  
"Would you PLEASE tell me what you're doing here and what Spike has done?"  
  
"Ooh. My Spike got a prezzie. Only the prezzie turned out to be bad. Now Mummy has to help him and Miss Edith told me he'd be here.", she said in a determined tone. If Angel didn't know any better he would have thought that she actually sounded sane for a moment. He was just about to ask her to clarify once more when Fred came in to the lobby.  
  
"Angel. Lorne just called. He told us to get down to the bar. Apparently a vampire named William is there, drunk, miserable and chasing customers away", she said while gathering up the usual equipment consisting of a light crossbow and some vials of holy water. She looked up from her task when she heard a squeak coming from the dark haired woman she had seen in the lobby when she first came in  
  
"Oh. Did I say vampire. Silly me. Ha-ha. I meant rats. Yup, Big, drunk hairy rats", She tried to correct her error.  
  
"Don't worry about it. This is Drusilla", Angel said. Fred immediately took the security off of her crossbow and aimed. She had not met Drusilla before, but knew enough to feel unsafe in her presence. Angel rushed over to Fred and pulled the crossbow out of her hands.  
  
"Don't. As crazy as her talk might be, we might find it helpful later on. Besides. I just got the carpets cleaned. Gunn. Drive the van around. I think William might be Spike. And if I understood a word of what Dru was saying, he might have gotten a soul. If he has, I need to be there." Three minutes later the lobby was empty and they all sat in the van heading down to Caritas  
  
~Sunnydale 2006~  
  
The passing weeks after the encounter in the cemetery, Buffy had gathered the remaining Scoobies, Xander, Anya and Willow to a research feast. Willow had brought a friend to help. A male friend, named Kyle. Apparently, Willow had been keeping the gang in the dark, about her new boyfriend material. Buffy was happy for Willow, finally allowing someone to enter her life, after Tara left three years ago. After Warren had shot Buffy and Tara, Willow lost it and started misusing magic. She killed Warren and nearly ended the world.  
  
She only stopped when Xander finally got through to her and told her Tara and Buffy would survive. Giles brought Willow to a coven in England, to learn how to control her powers and by the time she had come back, Tara had left.  
  
Buffy was happy for her friends, but a small and selfish part of her was jealous. Xander and Anya had eloped and married last year and by the looks of it, Willow would soon be in a more than platonic relationship with a fellow computer whiz named Kyle.  
  
Last Friday, Willow had finally found an ancient Egyptian text mentioning the siblings.  
  
"Listen to this text I found you guys. It was in this book that's sort of like the Book of the Dead. It's in Sumerian and it's not translated, but I think I can make most of it out. 'Seth cut his brother, Osiris into fourteen pieces and washed him out into the Nile for the crocodiles to eat the parts. Isis found the parts and assembled her brother, she mated with him and once again gave birth to twins. Teb Ankh and Sha-Het-Nem. To protect them from Seth she opened up a portal and sent them to rule another world.", Willow finished.  
  
"I found out what Teb Ankh means from this online Egyptian deity page, and am I allowed to say 'spooky'?", Kyle asked. Willow offered him a smile thinking how adorable he looked in research mode. His curly, yellowish blonde hair, tousled from being pulled at. He did that a lot when concentrating. His brown eyes met hers before he continued; " Ankh, as I'm sure you know, means life.. Teb on the other hand was a bit harder to find 'cause it isn't really a word. It's the name of an Egyptian deity who stole from the other deities. He was worshipped by thieves. Loosely translated Teb Ankh would mean 'life stealer." After finishing, Kyle looked around the table to see the others' reaction.  
  
Anya's head immediately shot up. She had excused herself an hour before, to count up the register, in the rebuilt magic shop. No one had objected, because they were all too familiar with the figurative havoc she would release upon them, if they refused her the dance of capitalist superiority.  
  
"Life stealer. Daywalkers. Teb Ankh. Sha-Het-Nem. Wait a minute! I know this! Uh-Oh.", Anya paused a look of complete horror washing over her face. This frightened the rest of the room who knew it had to be real bad for the usual non-emotional face she usually wore when they were talking about demons.  
  
"What do you mean 'uh-oh'? Do you mean 'uh-oh' in a good way? In a way like you're just about to say 'pfft. It will be over in a week'?", Buffy asked hopefully  
  
"Oh, it will be over in a week all right. When they start the Echetnel it will be less than a week before we're all killed or worse. Turned into slaves." Anya shuddered "Well, bye. It was nice knowing you. Now if you'll excuse me I need to go summon D'Hoffryn and grovel to get my powers back"  
  
"Ahn!" Xander stopped her. "You're not just going to leave me!? Leave us?", Xander yelled disbelievingly. They had faced many apocalypses together before and Anya had never deserted them, but once. Anya looked truly torn between staying and leaving, looking back and fort, from Xander and the door.  
  
"But- But if I stay, I don't get my powers back and if I don't get my powers back, he'll turn me into a slave. And believe me being ol' Tebby's slave is not ranking high on my ' things to do while human' list.", she desperately tried to reason why she wanted to live.  
  
"Anya? Would you mind backing up a coupla' pages for us. You kinda' lost me at Ethel. And why are you so terrified. What is so scare-worthy with the newest big bad? And how do you know him? Could you at least fill us in a tinsy bit?" Buffy begged  
  
Anya sighed exasperated and plopped down in one of the vacant chairs. "Fine", she rolled her eyes and through her hands up in the air in defeat. "Echetnel," she threw a correcting look over to Buffy before continuing" is sort of like if you were to throw the Mayor's Ascension and Glory opening the portal to her dimension, in to a bowl, mix it up, add too much Baking powder and then wait for it to multiply in size by a HUNDRED!" The entire room flinched at Anya's outburst.  
  
"My guess, is that this Mayor and Glory weren't 'do-gooders'?", Kyle asked. Buffy scrunched her nose and shook her head in response.  
  
"That would be the correct assessment. The Mayor was the one that caused the old high school to blow up- well technically, we did the blowing up thingy, but we wouldn't have if it weren't for him turning into this huge monster and Glory was responsible for Buffy leaping of a tower, killing herself so that the world wouldn't end- and I' m ranting now. I told you guys to stop me when I did that", Willow finished and swatted Xander gently on the shoulder.  
  
"Oh. Okay.", Was Kyle's response. He had gotten used to his new friends wild tales and he had seen with his own eyes, things he would have denied even existed a few months back. His skin had gotten thicker and things didn't amaze him as much as they would have before. "So you died, huh? Bummer. You're okay now, right?", he asked Buffy, with a voice full of sympathy  
  
Buffy nodded. Not wanting to linger on the subject, she brought her attention back to Anya. "How do you know all this? And what exactly is it we need to prepare for? Is there a way we can find out more?"  
  
"I've been to their dimension a couple of times. You know on business, for vengeance. And it isn't pretty. There are hardly any humans left. And lots of demons that actually made *my* skin crawl. The demons there have absolutely no humanity in them save for the need for power and control. Being there was one of the few times I was happy having more of a permanent residence in a world with humans. As dumb as humans might be they are entertaining and have an esthetic sense. Dimensions over populated with demons are often dull and sad.."  
  
"Anya, dumb humans right here, remember?" Willow asked gesturing around the table.  
  
"Right, well in their dimension the only thing remotely beautiful was Teb Ankh and Sha-Het-Nem's realm and palace, so naturally I was drawn to it. D'Hoffryn took me to a few balls there as well. I was introduced to them and Tebby and I started having sex. Oh he has a very good body and is fully capable of delivering orgasms", at Xander's pout she added,"well not as capable as you love muffin."  
  
"Anyway, during one of our meetings. He started asking me about this world and I found out his history with his mother and father being Egyptian deities and all. Intrigued of course, I asked D'Hoffryn what he knew and he was the one that told me about the Echetnel and about the pair's origin and how they gave each other orgasms as well." Anya shuddered at the thought of having been given orgasms by a creature that also gave orgasms to his sister.  
  
"Disgusted when sex is involved, my-my this apparently *is* the day for Anya's more unknown sides to come forth", Xander quipped, still a little sore because she kept talking about having sex with a demon.  
  
"Well yes. Sex with a sibling is just *wrong*. I should have known though. It is how Egyptian gods copulate usually."  
  
"So they are gods. And here I thought that I'd fought off enough gods for a lifetime. Hm Wait a minute, technically this is a new lifetime so I guess I have a new quota to fill. Mind getting to the part about this Echetnel? What exactly is going to happen?" Buffy asked a bit annoyed at the lack of progress in Anya's explanation.  
  
"That's it. I don't really know and D'Hoffryn was sparse when explaining it to me. What I d o know is that the first tide has already happened. They have somehow managed to cross over to this dimension. And this has me confused. Let me see. I met Teb 436 years ago. D'Hoffryn told me back then that the first tide would start 574 years from then. That has them missing the original timeline by 138 years.", Anya's voice became low as she continued her story  
  
" D'Hoffryn explained that the first tide would be 'the arrival' , the second tide would be 'the gathering of warriors'. This would probably be what they are doing now. Third tide would be 'the war of doom'. The scripts are vague on what happens after this, but the final tide would be the Echetnel. The portals between the two dimensions will open permanently and Teb Ankh and Sha-Het-Nem will draw power from both and will become the mightiest gods to ever reign. Humans not yet turned into slaves or servants will instantly be killed. Demons. Demons that haven't pledged their allegiance to their thrown, will also be killed instantly"  
  
As Anya's speech ended the entire room fell silent. Worry marred all faces. They would certainly be hard opponents to defeat if they were powerful enough to kill even demons in an instant.  
  
"You mentioned scripts. Anywhere we could find these now?", Willow broke the silence.  
  
"I can ask D'Hoffryn, but I'd bet that the Watcher's Council has references to it as well" Anya replied  
  
"Does this mean that I'll have to grovel to Travers?", Buffy asked. It sounded more like the statement it actually was than a question.  
  
"Or-or you could, you know, call Giles?", Willow hesitated and all, but Buffy herself cringed when Buffy's lips tightened and she clenched her teeth.  
  
"No", Buffy stated simply.  
  
"Buffy, please. Don't you think it's time the two of you reconciled? He calls Dawn and me all the time. He asks us about Erin and you know those things a grandfather figure would." Willow begged and Xander and Anya nodded in agreement. Buffy let out a short bitter laugh and looked away in response.  
  
Buffy wanted them to let it go. Giles, like all the other males in her life, had left. Left for England. Sure he had tried coming back when he first heard about Erin, but he should have known better than to leave her in the first place.  
  
"He thinks Erin is a freak. He wants to keep a journal on her and I'm sorry, but didn't *he* leave us? I want Erin to have a normal life. The life that I didn't get to have. But, I guess you're right. Better to call Giles than Quentin Travers. Speaking of Erin. I better get home" Buffy stated getting up. She left the Magic Box with eyes probing her back in pity.  
  
Everyone there wanted Buffy to get her father figure back and they knew Giles would be more than happy to return if only Buffy could overcome her bitterness.  
  
Buffy made her way back to Revello drive and let a smile creep across her face as she saw that Dawn had fallen a sleep on the couch with the TV on. My little rascal wore her out. She turned of the TV and the lights covered her sister's body with a blanket before heading up the stairs.  
  
She went down the hall to her old bedroom and peered inside the room. Underneath a blanket, in a sprinkle bed, she saw a head full of wild, blonde curls peaking up. She opened the door a bit more and carefully made her way across the room to the bed, to not waking the presumably sleeping form resting there. Her smile grew even bigger and she had to suppress a giggle when she got a clearer view. You whined till Dawn finally gave you the pacifier huh? What are we going to do about you? You're going to be four in January and you still use a pacifier. I'd love to explain that and your little craving to bite other kids to your daycare teacher.  
  
Buffy leaned close and placed a kiss on the toddler's forehead when blue eyes opened wide, with a mischievous glint. "Mommy" came the muffled outburst. Buffy smiled and took the pacifier out of her baby girl's mouth.  
  
"Hey baby. Were you nice to Auntie Dawn while I was away?" at Erin's vigorous nod, Buffy continued, "That I'll believe when Dawn give me the full story tomorrow. Now go back to sleep" She placed one more kiss to her daughter's forehead before leaving the room to go to her own.  
  
Once there she undressed and went to bed worrying what to do to protect her family from the new threat. It was a restless night for Buffy and she didn't fall a sleep until dawn. She woke momentarily when she felt the bed shift by the light weight of Erin laying down. Her daughter's usual morning routine. Buffy believed Erin did it to feel safe and was thankful. Erin's presence made Buffy feel safe as well. 


End file.
